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Affordable Care Act Toolkit for Self-Advocates

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) made it easier to get health insurance for all Americans, including those of us with disabilities. But a lot of the information out there about the ACA and attempts to repeal it can be difficult to understand and navigate. That’s why ASAN is proud to announce the release of our plain language Affordable Care Act Toolkit for Self-Advocates, part of which was funded by the Special Hope Foundation.

This resource is the first of several that ASAN is developing to equip self-advocates to participate in important conversations about our lives and the services we rely on. The ACA Toolkit has three parts:

The guide also includes a glossary of important terms to equip self-advocates with the words and phrases we’ll need to talk about health care, including “high risk pools,” “individual mandate,” and “pre-existing conditions.”

The health care system in America is a complicated topic, one we could be talking about for months or years. The Affordable Care Act Toolkit for Self-Advocates explains in plain language all the different pieces of the ACA, what the proposed changes are, and what the impact of repealing it would be. ASAN also plans to release short videos on this and other policy topics.

We hope that you’ll use this toolkit to understand and participate in these important conversations over the next year. We encourage you to share it widely so that we can give as many self-advocates as possible the tools we need to talk about the ways that policies affect our lives. Nothing about us without us!

Please send any concerns, feedback, or comments on how you plan to use the toolkit to ASAN’s Director of Operations, Zoe Gross, at zgross@autisticadvocacy.org.

The section “A Self-Advocate’s Guide to the Affordable Care Act” was made possible thanks to generous support from the WITH Foundation.